This is a book that you can't put down. A moving, touching story of South Africa ruled by whites in an dominantly black society. (Not the Oprah Book Club Copy-but same jacket cover)

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Welcome! to the "Cry, the Beloved Country" International Bookring

This is how it works:

• If you wish to be added to the list, please PM me with your details.
  
• This is an International Bookring. Please be available for international shipping.
  
• We will kick off once we have 3 members.
  
• You will be sending the book to the person who appears after you in the list, so you need to PM them to get their address!
  
• It's not a race, but please read and send the book on as speedily as you can, other people are dying to read it too! About two to three weeks is OK.
  
• Please journal the book once you have received it (so we all know where it currently is) and again when you have read it ( so we know what you thought of it!).
  
• If you're the last person on the list the book comes back to me!
  

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MEMBERS/LOCATION

1. Miss Terry---->KL, Malaysia
2. Zenita---->Denmark
3. TheWhiteLion---->London, England
4. CarynPic---->Pasadena, California
5. laurarn---->Tulsa, Oklahoma<---- Being Read by

Arrived yesterday... next on the tbr list :o)

Finished this yesterday, just in time to post to Zenita before going on holiday. I found this easier to read than "Too Late The Pharalope", also by Alan Paton, but still struggled at times with the style. Other than that its a moving account of life in South Africa.

Into the post to Zenita today.

After 4 months "at sea" it has finally arrived.

The envelope was a bit thorn, but the book has survived :)

What a wonderfull book.

Will send to TheWhiteLion next week

Posted it yesterday.
I had plannede to post it before I whent on holiday (to Turkey to see the solar-eclipse), but I didn't have time.

Received the book yesterday. As someone that lived in South Africa for most of my life, I'm particularly interested in the book and am looking forward to reading it.

I grew up in South Africa and lived there for 28 years, so my review of this book is definitely biased.

I saw the movie a long time ago (thought James Earl Jones was great!) and I really enjoyed it. The book brought back even more memories, and was even sadder than the movie was. The real tragedy revealed in book is not the tragic tale of the pastor's son who is hung for murder, but the tragic story of how life in South Africa, for black people and white people, is disintegrating.

The book tells the tale of how the rural life of black tribes has been broken and how their culture has been destroyed:

"There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how the well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens up the pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart."

The book tells the tale of how white people live in fear as a consequence of the destruction of tribal life and culture:

"Cry the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."

The amazing thing to me was that Paton wrote this book in the 1940's. Yet the book describes life in the South Africa of 2006, where people live in houses barricaded by tall fences and protected 24/7 by armed patrols, extremely accurately:

"We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego."

Paton provides a possible solution for all the troubles in South Africa though. (I guess this solution applies to every place in the world where there is conflict, and not just South Africa.)

"He stood as though he was testing his exposition. Yes, that is right about power, he said. But there is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power. I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it."

It is an amazing book, and I hope people who have had no experience of South Africa will be able to appreciate it as much as I did. I also stand amazed by the things Paton warned us about when he wrote the book more than 60 years ago, which are coming true today:

"He was grave and silent, and then he said sombrely, 'I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.'"

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica. God bless Africa.

Arrived safe and sound via Royal mail. Have two books before this one, but hope to start soon.

09.14.06 What a great heart-wrenching story. Will PM the next person on the ring for their address.

09.26.06 Haven't heard back from laurarn yet, awaiting address.

RELEASE NOTES:

FINALLY sent on to laurarn, sorry it took so long!

Recieved in the mail yesterday.

I have PM'd 4-lele several times for her address to return the book. I don't know if the Pm are going through,so maybe this journal entry will help. I liked the book very much thanks for sharing. Please PM an address to return it.

Mailed back to 4-lele today. Thanks for letting me have the experience of reading this book!